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Open-Even-More-Fire 3.5.1 Released!

Posted by jadestorm Apr 24, 2008

We are pleased to announce the release of Openfire 3.5.1, now with even more openness! This release represents the first stage of the Enterprise plugin split into open source plugins. We're very excited to be able to provide these to everyone for free, and seeing what the community does with them, both in terms of contributed code and use case scenarios. So lets talk about some specifics.

New Plugins!

Monitoring: Adds support for server statistics and chat archiving and reports.
Fastpath: Support for managed queued chat requests, such as a support team might use.

These are the first two pieces of the open sourced Enterprise plugin. Client management is coming very soon, as is clustering. SparkWeb will also be released tomorrow as a separate product. So you might be wondering, hey, why is there an Openfire Enterprise 3.5.1? Well, due to the lack of all of the plugins being available right now, we've provide 3.5.1 for existing enterprise customers to make use of. It includes some important clustering fixes though! (as will the clustering plugin when it is release)

Important, Seriously, Pay Attention, Read This

If you install the Monitoring and/or Fastpath plugin, make absolute sure that you read the readme first! There are included instructions for how to migrate your database from the Enterprise plugin to the new plugin database tables. If you have ever run the Enterprise plugin or the old Fastpath plugin before it was integrated with Enterprise, make sure you don't forget this or you will be unhappy!

Big Connection Manager Improvements

The connection managers have been updated to bring HTTP binding up to date and a couple of library upgrades that include a number of improvements. It is important to note though that the conf/manager.xml file has been updated and you will need to update yours as well. The new http binding section that you will need to add is described here.

Ok Fine, Where Do I Get It?

You can download Openfire 3.5.1 here.
You can see the entire changelog here.
You can view the documentation for 3.5.1 here.
Plugins can be downloaded from the admin console or here.

Tags: openfire, release, planetjabber

Apr 25, 2008 1:55 AM

wroot

Great! Will upgrade today and check that monitoring feature:)

Apr 25, 2008 7:35 AM

andylockran

When is PEP going to be integrated/added as a possible extension and is this related to the Enterprise Plugin migration, or a separatate plugin issue.

Apr 25, 2008 8:03 AM

srt

"Client management is coming very soon, as is clustering."
Does that mean you got a clustering solution that does not have the Coherence licensing issues?

Apr 25, 2008 8:25 AM

jadestorm in response to: srt

Nope, it means that the separate clustering plugin will be available for those with licenses for it.

Apr 25, 2008 8:26 AM

jadestorm in response to: andylockran

PEP was added in 3.4.0 See: http://www.igniterealtime.org/issues/browse/JM-1122

Apr 25, 2008 8:40 AM

srt in response to: jadestorm

Ok. Would there be an option to open up the clustering parts around Coherence that are not subject to the licensing issue?
I had a look at shoal and terracotta and I guess there are generic parts in the clustering plugin that could speed up integration of an alternative replication solution.

Apr 25, 2008 8:42 AM

jadestorm in response to: srt

That's a good question and I don't have the answer to it. I'll ask around. I suspect it's one of those annoying licenses where you can't share anything where you even used it. =/

Apr 25, 2008 8:46 AM

wroot

So, Fastpath for clients is only available via webchat (sparkweb)? Is there a possibility this oculd be done via Spark, like with agents? Could be like a contact in roster - "SOS" So you open a chat with it and ask, and fastpath will start its queue..

Apr 25, 2008 8:56 AM

srt in response to: wroot

No, the Fastpath Quick Start Guide says you can also use spark. The webchat is only an add-on.

Apr 25, 2008 8:57 AM

jadestorm in response to: wroot

I don't really know. I don't know a lot about Fastpath. I'm sure someone could write something for Spark for it if it doesn't exist already.

Apr 25, 2008 8:59 AM

jadestorm in response to: srt

Yeah see, like I said, read the Fastpath quick start guide. ;D Kidding. Thanks srt!

Apr 25, 2008 10:43 AM

dombiak_gaston in response to: wroot

Hey wroot,

The webclient.war (web application not sparkweb) is what users use to make requests. The web application provides a nice http/html UI that implements the XEP-0142: Workgroup Queues. Since we are following a XEP it is possible to build other clients that follow the same spec.

Having said that, Fastpath also provides a textual interface via a bot. Users from any XMPP client can send a message to the workgroup address (aka JID) and a bot will answer.

Apr 25, 2008 11:26 AM

dombiak_gaston in response to: srt

Hey Stefan,

Would there be an option to open up the clustering parts around Coherence that are not subject to the licensing issue?

When clustering was implemented we took special care to decouple it entirely from Coherence. The result of that work was that the enterprise plugin was only providing the implementation of some interfaces. Those implementations are the ones that are using the Coherence tool. That means that it should be possible to use other clustering solution and implement some interfaces and make clustering work.

Let me know if you are seeing some parts of the code that we need to review.

Thanks,

-- Gato

Apr 25, 2008 12:17 PM

starry99

Hi Gato.
Will webclient.war also be available for free or is it part of Sparkweb, which is supposed to be freely available very soon?

Bye
Starry

Apr 25, 2008 12:18 PM

DavidSmith in response to: starry99

SparkWeb is already open source, and webclient.war has nothing to do with it.

Apr 25, 2008 12:20 PM

dombiak_gaston in response to: DavidSmith

To add to David's comment. Code of webclient.war is going to be moved to the public SVN soon. For now people can download and use it just fine with the open source version of Fastpath.

-- Gato

Apr 26, 2008 5:02 AM

wroot in response to: dombiak_gaston

Gato, thanks for your info. Text is working, but it's a bit awkward. Clients need to support that XEP better probably? Would be great to have a possibility to add workgroup jid to your roster (or push it via shared groups, or like a bookmark in private storage). So anyone could easily access such support.

Apr 26, 2008 5:18 AM

srt in response to: wroot

You can already add the jid to the roster, e.g. support@workgroup.example.com

Apr 26, 2008 10:49 AM

dombiak_gaston in response to: wroot

Hey wroot,

As srt (Stefan) said, it is possible to subscribe to the presence of a workgorup by just adding the workgroup JID to your roster. IIRC, it is also possible to put workgroups in shared groups so they are automatically pushed to clients.

-- Gato

Apr 26, 2008 11:13 AM

wroot in response to: dombiak_gaston

Yes. I have already tried that. Wonder is it possible to disable all the texts of that bot? So just opening the chat window and typing something would start queue. And what about staying in that same chat window, or maybe another chat window, not a group chat?

Apr 27, 2008 5:16 AM

MarkJayz

you should add a function to the monitoring plugin which allows the user to delete all archived data in order to free disk space.

Apr 27, 2008 11:21 AM

dombiak_gaston in response to: MarkJayz

The archiving feature was done mainly for auditing purposes. Audited information should not be deleted but instead moved to another place to store it. Anyway, if you want to delete "old" archived data we can provide you some SQL statements. The info is store in 2-3 tables so should be quite easy to delete.

-- Gato

Apr 27, 2008 1:17 PM

wroot

How about statistics data? Is it saved in database too? How can i clear it?

Apr 28, 2008 12:40 AM

vanaf in response to: dombiak_gaston

dombiak_gaston, will Monitoring support XEP-0136 ?,

Apr 28, 2008 11:03 AM

MarkJayz in response to: dombiak_gaston

Hi Gato,

would be nice if you could provide us with the necessary statements.

But as wroot asked the same question, there is maybe really demand for adding a feature/function which allows the user the remove this data from the gui.

best,

Mark

Apr 28, 2008 11:13 AM

dombiak_gaston in response to: wroot

Hey wroot,

For statistics we are using RRD. An RRD database uses Round Robin and they never grow. The size of their file (stored in our case in the db) is always the same. IIRC, they were about 16K each.

-- Gato

Apr 28, 2008 11:22 AM

dombiak_gaston in response to: vanaf

Hey Ivan,

will Monitoring support XEP-0136 ?,

We are not currently planning to use that XEP for the message archiving feature. If you want to use that XEP then you can use an existing plugin that implements it for Openfire.

If someone is interested in wrapping our existing archiving feature using XEP-136 let me know and we can help you in that initiative.

-- Gato

Apr 28, 2008 3:19 PM

bueller in response to: dombiak_gaston

I would love to take a look at that code and see if I can get a version up and running with terracotta....

Apr 28, 2008 5:30 PM

willie44

Anyone know how to add a workgroup jid (support@workgroup.example.com) to a group that users and groups are controlled by LDAP, specifically Active Directory?

May 2, 2008 12:32 PM

jeffreyvsmith in response to: willie44

Is there another post somewhere outlining the timeframes? I am very interested in trying out the client management, which is "coming soon"...

May 2, 2008 12:35 PM

dombiak_gaston in response to: jeffreyvsmith

Hey Jeffrey,

We are done with clustering and a new version of monitoring. I will try to release them today. Client management is the last feature to open source and it is coming next. Part of the work has been done so we might release it next week.

-- Gato

May 2, 2008 12:38 PM

jeffreyvsmith in response to: dombiak_gaston

Wow. great work. This is a great product and I look forward to deploying it in our organization (100 corporate users, ~200 external users)...

Jeff

May 7, 2008 4:35 AM

vinaybagla in response to: jeffreyvsmith

team,

i hv two concerns:

1. enterprise edition says 5 days for the license to expire
2. sparkweb still has not been released as a "product". waiting for it to be out. when can be expect the same

May 7, 2008 7:15 AM

jadestorm in response to: vinaybagla

SparkWeb was released on April 28th: http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/docs/DOC-1515

May 8, 2008 11:22 AM

npalmer in response to: dombiak_gaston

Does the message archiving also use Round Robin storage? The reason I ask is that we need to keep a specific amount of days in archive for security requirements.

May 8, 2008 1:01 PM

dombiak_gaston in response to: npalmer

Message archiving is not using RRD. AFAIK, RRDs are not good for this case but for cases like taking samples and storing them.

-- Gato

May 8, 2008 1:16 PM

npalmer in response to: dombiak_gaston

Good. Can you tell me if there is any type of retention setting for the message archiving or if it keeps it forever?

Nathan

May 8, 2008 1:27 PM

dombiak_gaston in response to: npalmer

Hey Nathan,

Currently message archiving does not provide a way to clean up old history. It was implemented with auditing in mind so the idea is to keep track of all the information that was said. DB administrators are expected to move old information to permanent storage.

Regards,

-- Gato

May 9, 2008 11:14 AM

kryan

Hi Gato - you seemed to indicate above that a release with opensource clustering might be available soon? Is that right? (I know there are issues with licensing for the current clustering functions) We don't have an existing Enterprise licence, but we are very interested in the clustered solution. How can we get it?

regards,
Kieran.

May 9, 2008 11:19 AM

dombiak_gaston in response to: kryan

Hey Kieran,

Sorry for the confusion. I was saying that we were done with moving the clustering functionality to its own plugin. However, the plugin is not open source. You still need a Jive license (existing Enterprise licenses are valid) to be able to use it.

Some weeks ago I heard about some community members were thinking of implementing clustering using some GPL clustering tool. Since then I haven't heard anything else. It should be technically feasible to do that. So that could be an option for using clustering in Openfire.

FYI, I will soon write a document describing how to have fail-over using a backup Openfire server. It is not as having clustering for fail over but it gets closer.

Thanks,

-- Gato

Regards,

-- Gato